The Guines Family
The Guines Family The Guines Family were the original founders of the Caribbean province of Guines. The province was founded when Gareth Guines I, a poor Irish farmer, moved to the Caribbean with his close family in search of a new start. After several years of hard work and some shrude dealing he managed to take ownership of major parts of the Caribbean and eventually named all the combined land he owned Guines. Guines Family History Gareth Guines I, moved to the Caribbean in 1680 at age 30. He was a struggling farmer from Ireland with a drinking problem. His drinking problem caused him to go bankrupt so he sold his farm and used the money to buy a ship just big enough to carry his family across the Atlantic Ocean and stock it with ale and rum. He crossed the Atlantic with his wife, Lucile Guines, his three sons, Gareth Guines II, Isaac Guines and Gordon Guines, and his only daughter, Mary Guines. They arrived in a province of the Caribbean known as Exuma. They started out on one of the biggest islands in the Caribbean, Padres Del Fuego, hoping they could farm the land and earn a living. The family soon learnt that Padres Del Fuego was not ideal for farming because of its dryness, so they moved to Tortuga. They felt at home with the drunken pirates and although they drank they did not turn to piracy. Gareth Guines I, set up a small farm and farmhouse just outside of Tortuga Town in a smaller village known as Miner's Town. Gareth II and Mary, being the oldest of the siblings, had to go find jobs to support the family. Mary became a waitress at a local tavern and Gareth II worked at the island's shipwright. The younger siblings would help around on the farm and other small jobs for their father. Because of the cheap prices of rum on Tortuga, this didn't cause financial trouble for the Guines family this time round. They slowly made money from the farm until they could buy neighboring land and hire a few extra hands. By 1683 all the Guines children were at least 10 years old and could find light work for some extra income. By 1685 the Guines family owned four farms on Tortuga and were starting to sell crops at Port Royal in the drier seasons. Transporting crops to Port Royal was becoming costly so Gareth I decided to buy a farm on Port Royal. He bought a farm on the outskirts of the town near many other farmers and would visit the farm weekly while his eldest son, Gareth II, stayed there the entire week to manage it. Gareth I, met many other farmers from the Exuma province through his dealings in Port Royal. He met an English farmer from Port Royal named Jeremiah Galaira who, like Gareth I, was building his way up. He also met two landlords fighting to be the first to create a new province in the Caribbean. The one was a French landlord named Jean Fragilles and the other was a Spanish landlord named Hernan Savica. This was the first Gareth I heard of creating a province in the Caribbean and the thought excited him. After 10 years in the Caribbean, the Guines family were now well off. They owned a mansion on Tortuga and Port Royal and had a total of nine farms on both islands. The family had bought a galleon to transport their crops to areas where there were no farms such as Cuba and Padres Del Fuego. In 1692 there was an awful drought on Port Royal in the Exuma province. Three of Gareth I's five farms had already failed with crops and the remaining two on the island were taking strain without water. He sold all the crops on one of their farms on Tortuga and used some of the money to hire an inventor to create a useful irrigation system for him and the rest to buy the supplies that the inventor needed. The irrigation system was operational just in time to save the crops of the remaining two farms on Port Royal. The family used the money earned from the Tortugan farms to pay off the cost of the Port Royal farms. Eventhough they made no money that year they now had something the other farmers did not have, irrigation. At the end of the next season, the Guines family bought a large area of land on Padres Del Fuego and set up a huge farm. They implemented their irrigation system. Everybody thought they had gone mad with the heat of the previous drought, but the next year they were bearing fresh crops and fruits. Because they were so close to the markets of Padres they did not have to charge the markets an extra cost for transport so they could supply at a cheaper price. The Guines family took the monopoly of the fresh produce supply to Padres Del Fuego and used it to expand their farm on the island. In 1695 most of the Guines children had grown up. Gareth Guines I was now 45 years old and his wife, Lucile, was 38 years old. Gareth Guines II was 20 years old, his sister Mary was 19, Isaac was 17 and Gordon was 16. Gareth II was engaged to the beautiful daughter, Jennifer, of the family friend, Jeremiah Galaiara. Mary was already married to a common man from Port Royal, Exuma. By the end of the decade the Guines had a total of 22 successful farms in Exuma and they had built a market on Port Royal, Tortuga and Padres Del Fuego. They had become very succesful farmers in the Caribbean and one of the most successful in Exuma. In January 1700 the race to be the first to create a new province in the Caribbean between the French landlord and friend of the Guines Family, Jean Fragilles, and the greedy Spanish landlord, Hernan Savica, finally ended. Hernan Savica won a major privateering campaign against the French in 1698 and used this money to fund his farmland and buy more of it. Not long afterwards he had made such a huge impact that he managed to buy huge amounts of land and eventually he bought whole cities and islands. When his population had grown enough all his territories were declared the Province of Savica. The rise of Savica was a major blow to the Guines and Fragilles families, because now lots of the population from Exuma had moved to Savica and business was going slower for the farmers on Exuma. Hernan Savica and Jean Fragilles were also at war which meant that the Savica family had now gained the advantage. Category:POTCO Category:POTCO Creations Category:POTCO Stories Category:Folklore